Maigret in cure

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Maigret in Kur (French: Maigret à Vichy ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 67th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written in Epalinges from September 5 to 11, 1967 , after Simenon had previously spent a month's vacation in Vichy from July 25 to August 25 . The novel was published in the same year by Presses de la Cité . The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published in 1969 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in an anthology with Maigret and the Thief and Maigret and the Nahour Case . In 1989 Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Irène Kuhn .

In the novel, Maigret is out of service and is on cure in Vichy. But when a murder happened in the health resort, he interfered in the investigation. The murdered woman is a woman who apparently lived in complete solitude. Her only relative is a sister of completely opposite personality. Between visits to the doctor and fountain cures , Maigret follows the investigations of his local colleague and repeatedly gives decisive impulses.

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Célestins spring in Vichy , near which the Maigrets hotel is located

Maigret feels the first symptoms of old age. On the advice of his friend Dr. Excuse me, he and his wife are on a cure in Vichy in June. After only five days, a routine has established itself in the daily routine, through which the Maigret couple always meet the same people. They are already familiar with the “Lady in Purple”, a woman with tough features who is always alone. When Maigret reads the news of her murder in the newspaper, he can't help but interfere in the investigation led by his former inspector Désiré Lecœur. But even if Lecœur is only too happy to seek advice from the man who is still his “boss” for him, Maigret is not on duty. Instead of a bowler hat , he wears a straw hat and is content with following his colleague's interviews in silence between walks and drinking cures. And he takes the cure so seriously that he actually renounces all alcoholic beverages throughout the investigation, but not his pipe.

The dead woman's name is Hélène Lange, she was 48 years old and came from Marsilly . She lived in Paris for a few years , then settled in Nice and for nine years in Vichy. Apparently she had become so wealthy that she didn't have to go on working. She only rented a few rooms in her house to spa guests. At the time of her death, the Maleski couple and the widow Vireveau lived in the guest rooms. The only relatives are a younger sister named Francine, a former manicurist who now runs a hair salon in La Rochelle . The two sisters are separated not only by seven years of age, but also by completely opposite mentalities: Hélène lived alone all her life, her passion was romantic novels and her apartment contains only photos of herself. Francine is a fun-loving woman who drives an open sports car arrives, accompanied by a gigolo named Lucien Romanel. Since the age of fifteen, she had met numerous men, including a son named Philippe, whom she gave to adoptive parents, where he died at the age of two.

From one day to the next, the carefree Francine changes, suddenly appears anxious and worried and leaves immediately after her sister's funeral. A telephone operator at her hotel reported an anonymous call in which a man offered Francine money if she stayed in Vichy for a few more days that he would contact her. The man's voice betrayed asthma , and for Maigret the image of a spa guest who is staying in Vichy for the first time, is accompanied by his wife, which is why he is not free in his actions, and who by chance meets a woman who he already knew from before. The surveillance of the telephone booths he proposed leads to the trail of the Parisian industrialist Louis Pélardeu.

In his questioning, a year-long deception, which the two sisters Lange staged, comes to light. Hélène had worked in the Pélardeus company in Paris, and an affair had broken out between the two of them. Finally, Hélène broke off contact because she had allegedly become pregnant and her child should not grow up out of wedlock. The childless Pélardeu in his marriage had been paying the woman generous alimony for fifteen years and was waiting for the time when his son would come of age and he would be allowed to visit him. In fact, Hélène had never become pregnant, but had seized the opportunity to use forged papers to identify Philippe, her sister's son, as her own son. In return, Francine received part of the money for starting her hair salon. Even after Philippe died, Hélène reported regularly by letter about his career. When Pélardeu accidentally recognized her in Vichy, he went after her to see his son and entered her apartment. But there he found no trace of Philippe, he tried to find out the truth through begging and threats from Hélène, finally he choked her and squeezed too hard because her face showed no emotion until the end. After the perpetrator has been taken away, Maigret's job remains to inform his wife.

background

From July 25th to August 25th, 1967 Simenon spent a vacation with his partner Teresa and his children in Vichy. He wrote the novel Maigret à Vichy immediately afterwards from September 5 to 11, 1967 in Epalinges . It is unusual for Simenon to translate his own experiences into a novel in such a short space of time. In his intimate memoirs , Simenon later described the mating walks at Teresa's side through Vichy, which are reminiscent of those Maigrets with his wife. In contrast to his commissioner, Simenon did not take a cure and affirmed in the memoir that he had not taken a drop from the drinking fountain.

An encounter, however, was to trigger the novel: “Teresa and I were walking around the bandstand. I was fascinated by some of the faces, especially that of a rather skinny, very pale woman who we saw sitting in the same seat every evening. Wasn't there a dramatic look in her eyes? We created theories out of gimmicks as to who and what she was, as we often did with a passerby, a lady passing by and with the boules players. ”Simenon described the time after his return from vacation:“ In September [... ] I still felt the aftermath of our life in Vichy [...]. I wrote Maigret à Vichy from the still fresh memory , whereby the enigmatic lady from the bandstand became the heroine of the book. "

interpretation

Maigret in Kur belongs beside Maigret Goes Home and Maigret enjoying herself to the novels in which not determined the Commissioner at a central location itself, but plays a monitoring role and are merely crucial evidence. According to Josef Quack, he “relies on the essential function of an understanding interpreter of the events, a commentator on the psychological and moral elements of the case.” Maigret strictly separates his methods from those of the investigating Commissioner Lecœur. He is indeed “an excellent investigator” for him, but he does not use Maigret's method of empathy, the sympathy that goes so far that he thinks he is living with those affected in the case: “For Maigret, for example, the lady in purple was not just the victim of murder or someone who had lived one way or another. He gradually got to know Hélène Lange and tried almost involuntarily to deepen this acquaintance. ”On the other hand, it is said of Maigret's colleagues:“ Lecœur felt no need to enter her life, to understand her. He secured facts, drew conclusions from them and was spared from unrest. "

For Franz Schuh , the story combines chance and inevitability, the lifelong manipulation of a man and the chance re-encounter with his former lover in the spa gardens to create the logic of a murder, whereby the archaic character of the "ancient soul instincts, deception, guilt, greed" emerges. For Lucille F. Becker, the resolution of the case illustrates Simenon's thesis that in many cases a victim is to blame for his own fate. In the end, the investigation reveals the guilt of the dead for years, while the perpetrator is innocent in the sense of a higher degree of justice. Even the act in the affect is ultimately partly to blame through the victim. The perpetrator, on the other hand, impressed both Maigret and Lecœur in the final interrogation, and Maigret confesses in the last sentence of the novel: "I hope he will be acquitted ..."

reception

Franz Schuh broke away from his first impression of “crime fiction for the elderly” and described Simenon's “technical virtuosity”, which, however, only appears in isolated places. Nevertheless, for him, “Simenon's combination of chance and inevitability was ingenious” and the novel was ultimately “great, because through the flaws, an image appears in the reader that is marked by a nightmare logic”. Tilman Spreckelsen asked: "Is it because this novel is so out of the ordinary - the inspector is far from Paris, in Vichy, and he is here as a spa guest, which he takes unexpectedly seriously - that the book looks so fresh?" And he judged: "The spa town atmosphere clearly inspires Simenon, his descriptions sparkle with efficiency, and the way he lets the entire case grow out of it is masterful."

The novel was filmed in 1984 by Alain Levent with Jean Richard as Maigret as part of the French television series. In 2003 SFB - ORB , MDR and SWR produced a radio play adapted by Susanne Feldmann and Judith Kuckart . The speakers included Christian Berkel and Friedhelm Ptok .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Maigret à Vichy . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1967 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the thief . Maigret and the Nahour case . Maigret in cure . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1969.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret in cure . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1970.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret in cure . Translation: Irène Kuhn. Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-21770-6 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret in cure . Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 67. Translation: Irène Kuhn. Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-257-23867-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Biographie de Georges Simenon 1946 à 1967 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of the Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions . Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 61.
  3. ↑ Maigret of the Month: Maigret à Vichy (Maigret in Vichy, Maigret Takes the Waters) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  4. ^ Georges Simenon: Intimate Memoirs and The Book of Marie-Jo . Diogenes, Zurich 1982, ISBN 3-257-01629-8 , p. 796.
  5. ^ Georges Simenon: Intimate Memoirs and The Book of Marie-Jo , p. 799.
  6. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-8260-2014-6 , pp. 34, 38.
  7. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret in cure . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, pp. 150–151.
  8. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret in cure . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, p. 153.
  9. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene , p. 39.
  10. ^ A b Franz Schuh : At the healing spring . In: Literatures April 2006, p. 28.
  11. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon revisited . Twayne, Boston 1999, ISBN 0-8057-4557-2 , pp. 49-50.
  12. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene , p. 53.
  13. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret in cure . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, p. 196.
  14. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret marathon 67: Maigret in cure . On FAZ.net from August 21, 2009.
  15. ↑ Maigret in Kur on maigret.de.
  16. ^ Maigret in cure in the HörDat audio play database .